概念隐喻对并列中英双语者隐喻表达理解的效应研究

The effects of conceptual metaphors on coordinate bilinguals' understanding of metaphorical expressions

本研究采用同语言和跨语言启动实验范式,考察概念隐喻在并列中英双语者理解英汉隐喻表达中的作用。结果表明,并列中英双语者在概念隐喻层面的表征是共享的,一种语言的概念隐喻可以对另一语言的隐喻性表达的理解产生促进效应,但这种效应具有语言差异性和不对称性。英语隐喻表达的理解受概念隐喻的促进作用较为显著,但汉语隐喻表达却并不一定要借助概念隐喻来实现通达和理解。本文对概念隐喻理论的普遍适用性提出了质疑。

This study,using cross-language and within-language priming paradigms,explores the role of conceptual metaphors in coordinate bilinguals' understanding of metaphorical expressions.The results indicate that the mental representations of conceptual metaphors in English and Chinese for such bilinguals are shared and the conceptual metaphors in one language may promote the understanding of metaphorical expressions in the other language.However,this effect is differential in languages and is unsymmetrical.The understanding of English metaphorical expressions is promoted by conceptual metaphors more significantly while the understanding of Chinese metaphorical expressions may not need access to conceptual metaphors.This raises challenge to the universal role and ubiquitous power of conceptual metaphors.